ISAR imaging of maneuvering target with complex motions based on ACCF–LVD

This paper considers the inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging problem for a maneuvering target with complex motions, involving range migration (RM) and Doppler frequency migration (DFM) within the coherent integration period of radar imaging, which will degrade the imaging quality. A nonsearching ISAR imaging algorithm based on adjacent cross correlation function (ACCF) and Lv's distribution (LVD), i.e., ACCF–LVD, is proposed, where the ACCF is applied to correct the RM and reduce the order of DFM. Then the motion parameters are estimated via LVD and Fourier transform. With the estimated motion parameters, high quality ISAR images can be achieved. The advantage of the presented method is that it can estimate the motion parameters under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) without searching procedures. Finally, several simulation examples are shown to confirm the validity of the proposed algorithm.